


Five Times They Were Just Friends and One Time They Weren't

by scribblemyname



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, AKA Age of Ultron does not exist for the purposes of this fic, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Pre-Relationship, finally get together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 08:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4256268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't a date, even if she ended up taking him up on another 'drag the workaholic from SHIELD premises' schemes and ended up curled up beside him on the couch in his apartment watching the silliest, most ridiculous show while laughing as he defended it and his horrible taste in pizza.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times They Were Just Friends and One Time They Weren't

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jena Bartley (jenab)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenab/gifts).



The first time Maria ended up in bed with Barton was after a mission gone wrong in Egypt. They ended up holed up in a small safehouse with one bed and a tiny bathroom barely worth calling facilities. She sewed him up without flinching, and he let her without flinching. Her eyes were on the needle she was calmly threading through the edges of his gaping wound, and he stared at some point on the wall over her shoulder breathing shallow and even, as if it helped with the pain she knew he must be feeling.

"I'll take first watch," he said, throat raw and a little hoarse.

It had been bad. They'd drawn fire on their exit in the old battered jeep they'd ditched already, and they'd both inhaled a lot of dust while yelling over the gunfire to stay coordinated.

Maria just looked at him for a long moment, slightly disapproving. "You need rest."

Barton gestured to his arm. "Can't sleep." He gave her that look she was always giving everyone else. Do the right thing. Protocol exists for a reason. One of us needs to be rested so we don't start making fatal mistakes as a team.

She nodded curtly and curled up on the bed beside him while he sat and looked out the window through the tiny crack between blinds and glass. His gun was within easy reach, his bow not far beyond it.

She slept.

* * *

The second time they ended up asleep together, they'd been friendly coworkers for months after that first mission together when she'd extracted him. Maria had heard Barton was back from Afghanistan, a nation SHIELD seemed to send him back to frequently, and she found him on the break room couch, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

"Hill," he greeted perfunctorily when he saw her.

"You look terrible," she observed.

He did. Barton usually showered and ditched the tac gear upon entering the Helicarrier or a base, but this time, he was still in his black undershirt and outer pants, holster around his leg. The gun was absent, but the dust was not, and his forehead was slightly smeared with blood.

He shrugged. "They're out of coffee," he said when she went for the cupboard.

Maybe that's why he was in there. Maria went for her own private, _labelled_ stash of Nespresso. She made two cups and came over to the couch.

He squinted up at her, a skeptical expression at the mug in her hand on his face.

"Just take the coffee." She waited until he did before gingerly sitting on the other side of the couch. "You look tired."

"I feel like I haven't slept in weeks," he said dryly, then took a sip. "So how come no one ever told me where they hid the good stuff?"

Maria smiled over the rim of her mug. "It's mine."

"Huh." He looked between the coffee and her, then shrugged. "It's good. Thanks."

They were both tired. She'd gotten out of a thirteen hour day of nothing but meetings about terrible things going on around the world and what SHIELD was going to do about them. She didn't even remember falling asleep, just startled awake to Coulson staring at the two of them passed out on the couch together.

"I knew coffee was powerful, but to bring the two of you together…"

She raised her hand to stop him. Being Coulson, he did so with a smile.

"Let him sleep," she said as she got up. "He had a tough mission."

She'd served in the Marines. She knew the look.

* * *

Maria wasn't known for knocking off at a decent hour or for quitting when there was still more work to be done, so it wasn't really surprising that anyone could find her in her office at ridiculously late hours if she wasn't off somewhere on Fury's favorite Helicarrier. What she wasn't expecting was Barton to come find her.

He leaned in the doorway and crossed his arms as he looked at her.

"You're back," she commented. She assumed he was there for professional reasons. "How was Barcelona?"

"You know, the usual. Beautiful if you actually get to see it instead of staring through a scope at a bunch of ugly terrorists." Barton grinned as he said it, a more open look than the lazy, contented expression he shot at her sometimes when they were knocking off somewhere with other agents in a diner or bar. "You eaten yet?"

She held up the wrapper to her meal replacement bar before tossing it in the trash can.

He rolled his eyes. "I meant real food. Let me guess. You've been working for longer than twelve hours."

"Barton," Maria said exasperated. "I have work to do."

"Come on. You're tired. You need to eat. I know a great hole in the wall that serves real, homemade cannoli."

That sounded heavenly actually, though she usually preferred Thai. Barton had good taste in takeout, by all reports because he couldn't cook and lived on the stuff, but Maria hesitated anyway and looked at him. "What exactly are you asking me?"

He looked at her, hedged. "I just want to get my friend fed and off to bed before she gives herself burnout, okay?"

It's not like Barton wasn't known for being able to do platonic relationships with women when he wasn't smitten with them.

She nodded. "Okay."

She let him take her to the hole in the wall and order cannoli and tell her all the funny stories about missions and pranks among the people she hadn't seen lately. It was nice. She almost dozed off a few times, but he gently prodded her shoulder before she could completely pass out on his.

"Come on, Hill. Let me get you home."

"I can manage."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm sure you can, but seeing as you can hardly keep your eyes open, the right protocol would be to let me drive."

She let him drive, but she didn't fall asleep.

* * *

"Is he asleep?"

Natasha looked up at the question. She looked as terrible as Barton usually looked, pale with dark circles under her eyes, and Maria knew that Medical hadn't succeeded in kicking Natasha out since they brought him in.

Maria had read the file on Budapest and exactly how many slugs had barely missed Barton's vital organs. She hadn't counted on the way he looked so helpless in the bed, breath shallow, unable to shrug off the pain or laugh it off with his crazy jokes.

Natasha turned to Barton with a soft, "Clint."

He stirred and blinked in Maria's direction. Recognition flickered in his eyes, then he smiled. "Here to spring me?"

"No." She glared at him over her crossed arms. Trust Barton to find a way to make her snap at him. In the end though, she supposed angry was better than afraid.

"Next week then," he said easily.

Natasha rolled her eyes.

He ignored her. "It's a date."

* * *

It wasn't a date, even if she ended up taking him up on another 'drag the workaholic from SHIELD premises' schemes and ended up curled up beside him on the couch in his apartment watching the silliest, most ridiculous show while laughing as he defended it and his horrible taste in pizza.

"I got you Chinese. Don't knock the pizza."

"You can have excellent taste in egg rolls and still have terrible taste in pizza."

He shot her a mock glare over his slice of the cheap stuff and inhaled another slice or two before he gave up and stretched out on the couch beside her.

This time, Maria remembered falling asleep on him. His arm made a comfortable pillow, and he turned off the TV when he realized she was nodding off.

* * *

Barton lingered behind the other Avengers when they filtered out of the conference room after debrief. Maria didn't acknowledge his presence as she packed up her proliferation of papers. Both of them understood she knew he was there and waiting to talk to her.

He waited a few moments longer than she expected and after the last other person was gone to say quietly, "He's flirting with you, you know."

She paused at that. He didn't say it accusingly, rather carefully neutral, and she didn't see jealousy in his eyes when she looked up, brows raised in disagreement.

He had his sniper look, focused and hard to read, intent and observant.

"Rogers has been known to flirt," she commented dryly. "It doesn't mean anything."

Barton never stayed unreadable for long. He sighed exasperation. "You didn't shut him down. You always do." With everyone else.

But this was Steve Rogers.

Maria shook her head. "No one wants a workoholic married to SHIELD, least of all Captain America." It was a fact of life she'd come to accept, largely because she wasn't overly interested in starting a relationship.

Barton sighed and looked upward for a moment, clear frustration written in his body language before he shook his head and told her, "I want you."

She stopped and stared at him. Her mouth opened once, then snapped shut. "You never said anything."

"Well, you kind of made it clear you weren't interested in a relationship." His tone was a lot sarcastic and a little bitter.

Because she was good at shutting down flirting, and she hadn't been interested the first few times Clint had flirted with her. But she had gotten more than a little comfortable with him, with letting him feed her and talk her out of the office, and with sharing coffee and rants and…

She wanted to groan and walk away before this made her life complicated. "I'm not interested in Captain America," she finally said. So maybe a small, human, girlish part of her was interested in him, he was the epitome of good looking guy next door, but she never intended to act on it. To truly stay out of the limelight and do the work she did from the shadows, a relationship with Steve Rogers would make her life very complicated. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Clint let her go without comment. His face had that unreadable look that at least didn't make her feel guilty for sidestepping the bombshell he'd just dropped.

* * *

It was a lot to think about. She liked their friendship exactly the way it was. But she wasn't oblivious. She'd noticed he was attractive, especially his arms and shoulders and that crooked grin, and she'd noticed he'd turned down several women interested in him over the last few years. She hadn't noticed _why_ she'd noticed or thought about what it might mean.

She thought about it, she made a decision, then being Maria, she acted on it.

* * *

Clint looked surprised when he opened the door of his apartment to see Maria on the step.

She held up a box of his favorite, cheap, terrible pizza and asked, "Can I come in?"

The surprise didn't so much leave as change meaning from 'what are you doing here?' to 'is this really happening?' He opened the door wider and let her inside.


End file.
